


Like Lamplighters, Come to Dust

by aristos



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-21 05:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aristos/pseuds/aristos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Pablo? Do you believe in God?” </p><p>“I am a cat, Zacharie.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Three Words Too Late

“Pablo? Do you believe in God?” 

“I am a cat, Zacharie.” 

The masked boy gave the cat a wan smile, and rocked his chair onto its back legs, giving the animal more room in the steadily shrinking space. “I know that,” he said, shaking his head as he rifled through his luck tickets, a nervous tick of his that he never grew out of. “But that’s no answer.” 

“It is an answer,” Pablo countered, padding over to the small desk once the floorspace had shrunk to an uncomfortable amount, hopping onto the wood and nestling between Zacharie’s arms. “My answer is that I am a cat.” 

The boy sighed, and shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder how you ever became the Judge, my friend,” he said, pursing his lips. “You are far too arrogant for your own good.” 

“Aren’t all judges?” the cat countered, starting to lick a paw absently, unhappy with his lack of fur. “They have to be arrogant if they are to weigh the measure of someone’s life in their hands. Or paws, in my case.” 

Zacharie said nothing, content to fiddle with his wares. The Batter had just left for the Room, to see the Queen again. Zacharie had warned her he would come, darting into the room before the Batter and whispering his apologies to Vader and Hugo. To apologise for the monster that their beloved had become, because it was partly his fault. 

“Zacharie?” 

“Mmm?” 

“Why the question?” 

The boy took a bat from his bag— no one needed it anymore, not now— and hummed thoughtfully as he tapped it against the desk, shadows starting to slip under the door. Pablo mewed in fear, and swiped his tail across the boy’s mask. 

“I don’t,” Zacharie said finally, spreading out the fortune tickets and matching them to the luck tickets, like couples in a dance. “I don’t believe in a God. But I wish I did, though.” 

Pablo looked surprised, and fixed the boy with an interested look, his yellow eyes bright in the dimming room. “Why?” he asked, and his voice was raspy, tired. “You never before wanted some form of higher power, not when you fought the Toad King.” 

He scrunched a fortune ticket in his hand, and shot the cat an angry look. “We do not talk about that, Pablo. The walls have ears in this place,” he said, voice harsh. The cat bowed its head, and gestured with its tail for Zacharie to continue. The boy, seemingly drained from snapping at the cat, looked back down at his hands, trying to rectify the damage done to his fortune ticket. 

“Do you wish to have some form of story?” asked Pablo, and Zacharie looked at him in confusion. “Is that what you want? The fact that we are all pieces in a game of chess, and that someone has planned this all out for us?” 

The boy let out a barking laugh, and shook his head. Small flakes from his mask started to drifted away into the shadows, floating like snow into the dark. “No,” he admitted. “We are in a game already, Pablo. You know this.” 

“It is a nice thought.” 

“It is,” Zacharie agreed, and sighed. “You return to Zone Zero after this, yes? To meet the Batter again? How do you do that? How do you stop yourself from hating him every time you see him?” 

Pablo shrugged. “I am a cat. We hide our feelings well. What about you, Zacharie? You return to Zone One, and attempt to not sneer at him whenever his back is turned?” the cat asked, voice teasing. One by one, the lights flickered out. 

Zacharie laughed softly. “Why do you think I wear a mask, my friend?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “I have nothing but hatred for the Batter, you know that. It is best if he does not see it.” 

Pablo nodded, and jumped from the desk, eyes glinting in the dark as he started the long journey back to Zone Zero. It was silent for a while, nothing but the sound of Zacharie’s fortune tickets fluttering in the shadow of the wind, until, “Zacharie?” 

“Yes, Pablo?” he asked, turning around. 

“Why do you wish for a God? If not to have some form of structure in this game?” 

A small smile crossed the boy’s face, and he put down the tickets. “Because if there is a God, then there is a Heaven. And if there is a Heaven, I know that she is safe. Goodbye, Pablo.” 

“Goodbye, Zacharie.”


	2. Embrace of Smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Look,” she whispered, wrapping his hands around their son, and looked up at him with a smile that was so full of joy, “he has your eyes.”

He first met her on a midsummer evening in Alma, lying on his back and smoking cherry cigarettes with Dedan, watching the smoke dissipate once it got high up enough in the atmosphere. She had stood there, hands on her tiny waist and a righteous frown on those soft lips. 

“That is bad for you,” she had declared, and her voice was so beautiful, like a thousand love songs and smoke and old books and all the things that he loved in the world. The Batter looked at Dedan. Dedan looked at Batter.

The pair howled with laughter, and the girl stamped her foot. 

“Princess,” Batter said, propping himself up on his elbows and pulling his cigarette from his mouth with a long, lazy drag. “It’s just a bit of smoke. Nothing bad with a bit of smoke.” 

“Tell that to the Elsen,” she said, sticking her nose up into the air like a little snoot, and Batter couldn’t help but laugh at that. “It smells disgusting.” 

Dedan smiled toothily. “Tastes disgusting, too,” he said, and the girl recoiled with distaste, pulling the hem of her skirt away and looked as though she regretted even coming up to speak with them. 

“Hey, Princess!” Batter called, and she stopped, raising her eyebrows with dry irritation. He smiled at her benignly. “Try it, and then tell me how much you hate it.” 

She looked terrified, but accepted his cigarette with small, translucent hands. Pressing it to her lips— he had just pressed his lips to the same spot, oh she was beautiful— she sucked on it gently, and gagged, slamming a hand to her chest. 

“It’s terrible!” she announced, and Batter laughed, smoothing her back so that she didn’t choke on the smoke. “I rest my case!” 

“Hey!” he protested, grabbing her hand. “You’ve got to enjoy it first, you know. You’ve got to like doing it. Here, let’s try it this way,” he announced, taking a slow drag on the cigarette, and then pulling her close so that he could see right into the deep blue of her eyes. 

After a brief moment of contemplation, he kissed her, letting the soft stream of smoke through his mouth and into hers. 

 

“Look,” she whispered, wrapping his hands around their son, and looked up at him with a smile that was so full of joy, “he has your eyes.” 

The Batter swallowed, and cradled the boy to his chest, pressing a soft kiss to his downy hair, and then a soft kiss to his wife’s. “What do you want to name him?” he asked quietly, mesmerised by the child between them. 

Vader shook her head, nosing at his cheek with barely constrained happiness, her eyes filling with tears at the thought of them having a child. Together. “I wish to leave that up to you, my love. Give a life to our child the same way that you gave life to me.” 

He had no response to that but to kiss her, soundly, contentedly, pulling away only when her eyes were dazed and her smile was like poetry. “Hugo,” he decided, stroking the boy’s hair and staring at the identical eyes. “We shall call him Hugo.” 

He had never felt so happy before in his life. Today, his wife gave birth to their son. He had his eyes.


	3. Fade to White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You cry out, crumpling in on yourself like a marionette whose strings have been cut, abandoned by the world and tangled in the web of lies that held you up. Your mask clatters to the floors, and hot tears drip down your face, pooling in the dust at your feet. She is gone.

She is dancing. 

You watch her dance in your mind’s eyes, sitting there in the room all alone with your head in your hands and your heart in your mouth, scared for her and of her and with her and about her and everything in your life (all that ever will and ever has been) is her. 

Her hands fly out to reach for him, and he backs away, and she runs, and he strikes, and with every blow you feel your heart break because you love them both so much, yet there is — nothing — you — can — do. 

She is laughing, oh, God, she is laughing and there is nothing you can do but cry, because her laugh is the most beautiful thing you have ever heard. Her smile, her dance, her delicate hands and her pale eyes that seem to stare out at you containing no emotion and yet all of it at once. 

And then—

You cry out, crumpling in on yourself like a marionette whose strings have been cut, abandoned by the world and tangled in the web of lies that held you up. Your mask clatters to the floors, and hot tears drip down your face, pooling in the dust at your feet. She is gone. He won. 

You are so sorry. You loved her so much, and you never told her. No, that is a lie. You told her— you told her every day, in every kiss and every small sugar sweet embrace and every whispered word in that soft hollow of her throat. You just never told her enough, you never told her just how much you loved her, or when you started, or how you started, or anything. She would have been a Queen beside you. 

The room has not changed, still a simple yellow room with the dust of the Elsen coating the floors and your mask pressed against the floor, and the small traces of sugar. Sugar. Sugar. 

But, yet, without her the room is empty. Your pack is light. Your eyes are tired. The world is not dark, but light. The world is white, a mocking colour, like her eyes and her jacket and the soft sugar that spun between her lips between every soft word. Tears seem mechanic now, not an expression of emotion, but simply water streaming from your eyes. Your mask is not a sign of your victory against the Toad King, but simple a piece of card stretched across your face and tied with twine. Nothing held meaning, now that she was gone.


	4. When the World Went Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zacharie laughed, and shook his pack. “There is only one thing I have to sell to you, dear friend, and only one thing you have left to buy. The last moment of the game, the final battle to settle the score.”

Zacharie sat there, staring out into the steadily growing darkness as the endgame closed around him, encasing him in its shadowy tendrils. Pablo settled on his lap, letting out soft hisses as the dark edged ever closer. Slowly, everything faded into the dark, like water poured into a pool, sloshing over the sides and spilling over the edges. 

“Zacharie?” asked Pablo, and the boy looked down, bemused. “You do not seem well. You are trembling like a leaf.” 

He laughed softly, and shook his head. “There is something that I must do, Pablo. That is all. I must speak to the Batter.” 

The Judge bowed its head, and looked away. “It’s your own fate,” he said, and Zacharie let out a barking laugh, hauling his pack over his shoulder as he started off through the Zone, the knot of string at the back of his head rubbing uncomfortably as he moved. 

Through the sugar (sugar, sugar, sugar…), through the mines, over water and under ground, he emerged in the Room. The Batter may travel by Nothingness, but Zacharie had long since learnt the secret ways of the ancients, and so moved in patterns that no one would be able to find him. 

Finally— 

“Buenos dias, Batter,” he greeted, crouching down by the man. The weary man looked up, eyes hazy, before reaching for his bat. “Oh, no, no, no. It is I, old friend. Zacharie. Have any credits to spare?” 

The Batter’s look was so dry that Zacharie had to commend him over the control of his facial expressions. “The game is OFF,” he stated calmly, and pushed up so that he was in a sitting position. “You do not have long, and you want to waste your time on credits?” 

Zacharie laughed, and shook his pack. “There is only one thing I have to sell to you, dear friend, and only one thing you have left to buy. The last moment of the game, the final battle to settle the score.” 

Now the Batter’s interest was piqued. “What?” he asked, leaning forwards slightly. “How much will it cost, this final item?” 

The masked boy laughed, and the Batter could not help but shiver. “Oh, Batter, you have already paid.” 

The last thing that the Batter saw before the white mask was lowered over his eyes was his own face— his— own— face — staring back at him. Zacharie laughed, and smiled, and Batter could not comprehend how terrifying this was. His face. 

“You…” 

“I am you,” Zacharie agreed, hauling Batter to his feet as they started to walk. “Yes, I know. How else do I know about the game, about the puppet? I am you, Zacharie.” 

The Batter felt sick. 

“Oh, look,” Zacharie said, staring out into the Zone as it started to go dark, one by one the lights flickering out. “Make a wish.” 

The Batter screamed.


End file.
